It was over four years ago that I attended an intranet conference hoping to pick up some tips about how to develop a better intranet. One of the speakers – a tall, well dressed and impressive looking guy from a well-known global company – delivered a case study about a huge multi-million dollar intranet re-design project his company had just finished and that he had project managed.

He began his presentation by saying that it was important to get key stakeholders involved and that an effective business case was the key to doing this. He then went on to say that gaining end user support was also critical and that you should conduct as many workshops as possible to not only obtain requirements but also to build engagement.

This was all sounding good and most people were nodding their heads in enthusiastic agreement.

He said that card sorting and wire-framing were important tools for the design and that you also needed a detailed content development plan, along with training, communication and marketing plans.

Everyone was agreeing and thinking, ‘these guys have all the bases covered’.

Then he demonstrated the new intranet. There were appropriate ‘oohs’ and ‘aaahs’ as a very good looking website was unveiled. He took us through some of the key features – nice looking staff profile pages, revolving news stories, some colourful performance indicators on the front page, even a few online forms … and then … that was the end of the presentation!!

I felt like Moses looking at the gates of the ‘Promised Land’ but unable to enter! I wanted to know, ‘Was the intranet any good!’ Where was the evidence? Was anyone using it? Did it deliver on the promise made in the business case? Did employees value it? Did the approach he recommended actually work? For example, how did he know the card sorting produced an effective navigation?…

Sadly, he had answered none of these questions. And in my eyes, without this evidence, his presentation lost most of its credibility.

As a result of this anti-climactic experience, a few months later I decided to start the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) (the WIC is a tool that gives companies the ability to obtain feedback about the intranet from their employees and then benchmark this feedback with other companies. It helps answer the question, ‘How do employees value our intranet?’).

Over 40,000 people from more than 150 companies in 23 different countries have now completed the WIC.

While many individual companies have appreciated using the WIC to deliver a more valuable intranet to their staff, the WIC has also provided a wealth of end user data that can be analysed to identify industry wide trends and answer questions such as:

• What are the business drivers that highly rated intranets have in common?
• What are the biggest problems that intranet end users have with their intranets and how are leading companies resolving them?
• How have intranets in general evolved over the last 4 years and what direction should they be heading?
• What types of content do end users think add the most value?
• How are companies using feedback to prioritise future intranet improvement initiatives?

These are some of the questions I will be answering during my presentation at Interaction 2013. I will also be talking about how benchmarking your intranet not only helps make your presentations more credible at conferences, but can also help you to:

• Prioritise your long list of intranet improvement activities
• Measure the impact of changes or improvements you may implement
• Motivate your intranet team by providing measurable goals
• Obtain recognition from your peers
• Obtain funding for a business case to improve your intranet

The post Why benchmarking your intranet is vital to success appeared first on Interact software.

There are also a number of other factors unique to the charity sector including:

• High staff turnover
• Governance
• Resource
• Part-time staff
• Flexibility
• Role/skill diversity

A successfully deployed and adopted charity intranet portal can give charities an invaluable platform that will have huge benefits to the way they work, including assisting with streamlining key business processes, improving internal communications and significantly reducing operating costs.

Case Studies: These employee portal examples show how some Interact customers are achieving success with their charity intranet

Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation

The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation has 1600 employees working across 15 countries. The organisation’s global landscape can present internal challenges when it comes to sharing information, communicating and collaborating.

They previously used a SharePoint intranet, which was difficult to manage and was proving to be more of a hindrance to collaboration and knowledge sharing than an aide due to the time, effort and training needed to maintain it.

Benefits since moving to Interact:

• Decentralising the day-to-day running of the intranet away from IT has saved money in time and resources
• Postage costs and internal e-mail traffic have been significantly reduced
• Obtaining information for funding proposals is now far quicker and easier
• Anyone in the organisation can quickly and easily add a document or blog onto the intranet.
• People are empowered to find their own information using the powerful search facility, saving time and making everyone more productive.
• The Foundation feels they are more of a ‘community’ where everybody feels they can have their say.

Their intranet went on to win a CIO Award for demonstrating the ‘Transformative Power of IT and Business’ with their intranet.

The most important change is that the intranet has brought us all more firmly together. This feeling of community, of working towards one vision, is vital for what we do and Crossroads has given us a living example of this.

Keith Fleming, IT Manager for EGPAF

North Devon Hospice

North Devon Hospice was the UK winner of Interact’s Global Charity Competition in 2012. The charity was very eager to build and roll out a custom intranet for their 500 staff and volunteers based at the charity’s headquarters and 12 shops spread across North Devon, UK.

Without an existing charity intranet portal, the intranet needed to overhaul internal processes, improve departmental communications and reduce costs.

Benefits since moving to Interact:

• The Community Nurses working remotely across North Devon and the staff and volunteers working remotely in the charity shops now have instant access to everything, including news, information and access to all processes
• The intranet has become a reference point for all everything, meaning that everyone has access to information at the touch of a button
• Significantly improved access to information as all documents and forms are now stored centrally in one place, making it easy to find what people need through straightforward navigation
• Every patient and carer leaflet has been uploaded to the intranet with their review dates in the summary, boosting confidence in version control
• The People Directory has meant that for the first time, employees and volunteers were available at the touch of a button and those who hadn’t met before got to put faces to names.

From day one, the Intranet has been developed from the bottom up. I visited every department to tell them about our amazing win with Interact and we talked about what they would like to see on there, what would be useful, among plenty of other things. The Intranet is completely bespoke to meet the needs of the hospice and its departments.

I started to roll out of the new intranet (January 2013) through small launch sessions so people could see and use it for the first time and ask questions if they needed to. At the end of every session, people gave nothing but positive feedback and enthusiasm for the Intranet. It’s so easy to use and navigate and with everything in one place, it is quite easy to see just how it will benefit the charity and people in their roles. What we have now is a fantastic platform which will continue to evolve, continue to keep meeting the needs of the charity and continue to keep reducing our costs year on year.

Marie Fraser, Head of Marketing and Communications at North Devon Hospice

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In less than a year, GHA’s intranet has proved itself an invaluable business tool. As well as saving time by bringing paper-based processes online, the Interact Intranet software solution has transformed the organisation’s internal communications into an intelligent, collaborative, open and transparent communication model which solves business problems.

Wendy Jordan, Internal Communications Co-ordinator and Intranet Manager for GHA said, “In order to create an intranet which was useful, usable and used, Interact introduced a range of features based on user suggestions, including video sharing and blogs.

“At launch we had 80 per cent of staff using our intranet and now it has grown to 88 per cent which is really impressive when you consider only 75 per cent of our staff are desk-based.

“Blog posts receive around 1,000 views each, alongside scores of comment which prompt transparent conversations about the key issues the organisation faces. This highlights how all desk-based staff and a large proportion of our mobile and warden staff are using the new intranet on a regular basis. It has completely changed the way we work and revolutionised internal communications.”

CEO of Interact, Nigel Danson comments, “The success GHA has received via their intranet is testament to a phased approach to social change, shifting the organisation’s behaviour from top down communication to encouraging internal communication, which has turned traditional problems associated with intranets into opportunities.

Since implementing Interact Intranet, GHA has transformed business communications, with employees actively using the social platform to comment, ask questions and interact with one another, which has improved knowledge sharing inter-departmental communication.”

Wendy concludes, “Our intranet will continue to grow and evolve. We will keep a close eye on industry developments and involve our staff in making sure the new intranet continues to be of value to them.”

Interact is also proud to announce its clients Business Environment and Superdrug were nominated at Ragan’s Communications Awards for Best Social Intranet and Best Value to Employees, respectively.

Wendy will be showcasing the Glasgow Housing Association intranet at Interaction 2013 in London on 24 & 25th September – the UK’s largest intranet conference. Find out more >>

‘Glasgow Housing Association achieving Social Change’ Read the whitepaper >>

About Interact

Founded in 1996 with headquarters in the UK, Interact operates globally and is one of the fastest growing intranet software companies. With over a decade of experience Interact has built a strong reputation of delivering successful and collaborative intranet solutions to leading companies.

About Interact Intranet

Interact Intranet is intelligent intranet software created by Interact. The flexible and scalable solution has more than 500,000 users and has revolutionised the way companies communicate, collaborate, share knowledge, and streamline internal processes. Interact Intranet promotes a culture of collaboration and idea sharing by using corporate social networking and micro blogs. Non-technical users can quickly and easily update the intranet.

Interact creates successful and essential intranets that intelligently push relevant content to people with simple to use tools, saving time and helping get work done. For further information, visit: interactv2.wpengine.com.

Interact UK, 4th Floor, Station House, Stamford New Road, Altrincham, Cheshire, WA14 1EP, United Kingdom. Tel: +44 (0) 161 927 3222, Fax: +44 (0) 870 112 588.

Interact US, 222 West Las Colinas Blvd, Suite 1650, Irving, Texas, 75039, USA Tel: +1 (214) 774 2802

About Glasgow Housing Association

GHA is one of the largest social landlords in the UK, with more than 43,000 tenants. It is part of the Wheatley Housing Group, a group of organisations which work together to provide affordable housing, community regeneration and property management services.

For more information visit www.gha.org.uk/content/

¹ http://www.ragan.com/Awards/EC2012AwardWinners.aspx

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The simple to use and intuitive tools in Interact 7 are combined with an intelligent and social layer that cuts through the content noise in businesses to ensure the right content finds the right people, so that employees with minimal time are pushed targeted communications to help them get their work done.

Nigel Danson, CEO of Interact says, “Working smarter, not harder, is key to business and people efficiency. Therefore having one platform to do this eliminates the frustrations and time wasted by going to different applications for collaborating or completing essential work tasks. One central location saves time and improves transparency of information throughout the entire company.

“Social tools can bring massive competitive advantages when aligned to how people work; however on their own they’re not enough. Innovative tools, such as the new intelligent forums in Interact 7 let people share an idea, ask a question or start a discussion can help a company to quickly access the expertise of people – regardless of location or department. It also allows for greater innovation and efficiency, not to mention the speed at which a decision can be made and acted on.

“The ultimate goal of Interact 7 is to make organisations more successful, to drive profit in commercial businesses and increase revenue and efficiency in not for profits.”

New features of Interact Intranet 7 include:

• Responsive design: Interact 7 is the only intranet platform to be built from the ground up with true responsive design. It now means your intranet is easy to view on any device, at any time, with no compromise on functionality.
• Redesigned People Directory: including ‘Endorsements’ to build up a skills matrix and ‘Presence’, which lets you see who is online in real-time – helping you get answers faster than ever before. Powerful profile filters such as name, department, location, expertise and interest rapidly narrow down search results and the time it takes to find the co-worker needed.
• Interact Timeline: present people with intelligently tailored content focusing on giving you the vital information you need to do your job.
• Intelligent Forums: intelligent discussion forums make it simple for employees to now communicate, share ideas, find answers and collaborate in one central location. Removing the need for departments, such as HR having to spend time repeatedly answering the same query.
• Interact Search: one-click search incorporates adaptive learning capabilities and continually optimises search results – ensuring that the intranet user always finds exactly what they are looking for.

Interact’s latest and best intranet software release is now available immediately to try at interactsoftware.com/try

ENDS

About Interact

Interact understands that effective and efficient collaboration is an essential part of business life.

Interact Intranet filters through the noise that is traditionally pushed out by intranets by utilising a blend of social and easy-to-use productivity tools to aid communication, collaboration and completing key business processes. This in turn reinvigorates employee engagement and interaction, empowers staff and increases productivity; helping people to get work done and achieve results quickly.

The roll-out of the software is aligned to enable units outside of IT, such as HR, marketing and operations, to quickly deploy, build and benchmark operational solutions.

With over 500,000 users, Interact Intranet is a flexible and scalable solution which complies with ITIL best practice, conforms to Information Security Standard, ISO 27001 and adheres to the Investors in People standard.

Founded in 1996, Interact has offices in the UK and US, and works with global brands such as Park Plaza Hotel Group, NHS, Kantar Media and DHL.

For further information, visit: interactsoftware.com

The post Interact launches Interact Intranet 7 appeared first on Interact software.

Discussion forums are a familiar environment to both generation X and Y so they get the greatest traction from users – making them the perfect platform to encourage purposeful collaboration, improve communication and leverage knowledge sharing on your intranet. Because a Forum is also a peer-owned space it can also be a place of psychological safety in the workplace.

We believe an intranet should make your employees working life’s easier and not overload them with a collection of tools that are confusing, leading to them losing trust in your intranet. This is why when we are developing our intranet software, we endeavour to ensure that the tools we create help people get their work done in the easiest way possible.

In the brand new version of Interact 7 we wanted to create the ultimate Discussion Forum experience, containing the maximum functionality for users. So we developed a central area that users can come to when they want to discuss a topic, share their ideas or when they have a question to ask.

How did we do this? Read our behind the scenes journey of how we created the most powerful Discussion Forums experience in Interact 7 (and how many cups of coffee it took!)>>

The benefits that the new Discussion Forums in Interact 7 will bring to companies are massive and include:

• Improved knowledge retention – reducing the reliance on email for sharing ideas and asking questions
• Reduction in duplication of effort – putting an end to answering the same question again and again by the same people
• Improved innovation – providing a topic based area for surfacing ideas in your company and offering a unique way to vote and take action as a result.

We are launching Interact 7 on April 30th in a free online webinar, where our CEO and Founder, Nigel Danson will reveal all of the advanced new features in Interact 7 – our most sophisticated intranet experience to date.

Don’t miss out discovering the powerful capabilities of Interact 7. Reserve your place today >>

The intranet revolution is here….are you ready?

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In the extensive report, Nielsen Norman interviews 22 companies from across the globe to discuss how the social features on their intranet have had an impact on the way that they work. Interact Intranet user and winner of the 2012 Intranet Excellence Award of ‘Best Social Intranet’ – Business Environment were one of the companies to be featured in this report.

Through their analysis the group discovered that there’s no doubt that social features are even more useful inside the enterprise for supporting employee collaboration and knowledge management.

Notable findings in the report:

• Users are taking to social tools easily when they’re given them for the right reasons and in the right work context, with minimum training.
• Despite companies’ concerns about employees using social tools with impropriety, infractions remain rare.
• Community management is vital in social environments.
• An integrated Search functionality that searches the entire social layer on the intranet in addition to other content is essential in the enterprise.

Further summaries from the report can be found here, but their most significant finding was as follows:

“The most important conclusion from both research rounds is that social intranet projects must be driven by business needs – that is, the problem or pain point you’re trying to solve.”

This is the fundamental principal we uphold at Interact when we’re developing our product – that in order to create an intranet that becomes essential to an organisation it must have the correct blend of all of the following tools, to:

1. Improve communications such as status updates, news and policies
2. Provide collaboration through features such as group collaboration tool Interact Teams and crowd-sourcing tool, Interact Answers
3. Carry out business processes and get work done. Traditional tools such as Workflow and Forms and Mandatory Reads are crucial in order to ensure user engagement

Combining these three core elements with a layer of intelligence, to filter out the content noise and automatically push content to users that is relevant to them and their job, will create the definitive intranet. Read more about the importance of intelligent intranets >>

If you want to read the full Nielsen Norman report, ‘Social Features on Intranets: Case Studies of Enterprise 2.0’ you can download it here >>

The post Interact in Nielsen Norman ‘Social Intranet Report’ appeared first on Interact software.

In 2011 G4S were facing a number of internal issues with their existing intranet, it was very outdated, difficult to navigate and complicated to update. Interact Intranet has been able to deliver a number of benefits to this leading global enterprise. They make great use of the intelligent search functionality on their intranet that searches all of the content on the intranet to provide users with the best results. Using Interact Intranet G4S’ users can now find the information they need in rapid time and at the click of a button.

Their intranet, called ‘The Hub’ has provided G4S with a central communications platform. They use collaborative tools such as Interact Teams to provide an online space for people who are based at different locations to work together on projects, regardless of their time zone. Employees are able to easily start teams that can be set as open, private or hidden, depending on the purpose of the team.

A great success has been their website editing team. Before using Interact Teams, one large email (usually indexed as it was so lengthy!) was sent out to over 125 countries, spread over different time zones, leading to disjointed and delayed replies. Now, they have one place to store important information that people can log onto, regardless of their time-zone. It also provides a central reference point for members to come back to if they’ve been away, without having to sift through a series of long emails.

The Hub has been a huge success in helping a number of departments, including the HR team who use a page on Interact Intranet called the ‘Employee Zone.’ This stores up to date versions of important policies, in-line with legislation that all employees can access at any time to get the information they need.

Cassie Byne, Corporate HR Manager describes Interact Intranet as “time-saving, engaging, visually pleasing and above all really easy to use.”

The post How G4S’ intelligent intranet improved their global communication strategy appeared first on Interact software.

Last year we saw some great ideas – from online Christmas cards, intranet advent calendars and office party forums.

Our competition is open to everyone with an intranet, be that an Interact customer or not. So spread your Christmas cheer with us!

Here are some of the entries we’ve had:

Glasgow Housing Association have been doing many festive things on their intranet this year. They have an intranet advent calendar which they update every day by adding a new article about a different staff benefit with a quiz, then link the article to the calendar using the image map editor.

Dollar Finance are having a great 12 days of Christmas on their intranet.They use the peer-to-peer recognition widget – Interact Rewards and have renamed it ‘Santa’s Presents.’ This lets colleagues give presents in reward for seeing good work and achievement, and on Christmas Eve the stores can swap the presents they have received into actual gifts.

“We have a Christmas facts section and a Christmas Cracker…joke of the day! together with a countdown until the BIG day! so why does santa have 3 gardens?…so he can hohoho” Paula Kenyon, Dollar Finance

A page called All Yule Need has everything their shops need for Christmas, instead of posting out binders with printed information, so it has made a great cost saving. They have also recorded several videos of Santa delivering messages to the staff which have been shared on their intranet Doris.

North East Derbyshire County Council, added a Festive theme to their intranet and used it for their annual Christmas charity auction of prizes donated by local companies.

“This year we are holding an online auction ‘eBay style’ via a dedicated top menu section. Each lot is a separate discussion thread, bids are made by posting replies. It only began yesterday & is doing great, all in the name of Rainbows Children’s Hospice.” Elaine McGovern

The Royal College of Physicians will be showcasing each department’s entry to the office Christmas decorating competition. They are also running a Christmas Fact of the Day feature on their homepage.

Congratulations to Paula Kenyon from Dollar Finance, who really got into the spirit of it all and for her great use of creativity which has led to an increase of 250 visits per day!

The post What Festive Features are You Doing on Your Intranet? appeared first on Interact software.

In particular the brand new Intranet Homepage Wall was a massive hit and got everyone talking, debating and occasionally arguing! It also gave intranet managers a rare chance to see many intranet homepage designs in one place and gave them lots of ideas on how their own intranet might be improved.

The Homepage Wall gave delegates the opportunity to select the homepage they thought was the best designed and most engaging and it was very interesting to see the votes come in over the two days. If you missed Interaction this year or didn’t get a chance to see the wall then here are the top three favourites and why we believe they got the most votes.

The clear winner was with the most votes was Glasgow Housing Association’s intranet homepage:

Kantar Operations was deemed the second favourite of the attendees:

The Royal College of Physicians were third place:

So why do we think these homepages were the most popular amongst the Interaction crowd, which consisted of intranet and collaboration specialists and Interact customers? Our Interact Community Manager, Nigel Williams explains why he thinks the top three were voted for:

“What the results have shown us is that intranet design is highly subjective. However, what is interesting is that two of the three winners picked by attendees were awarded winner and runner up of our intranet design award, during the Intranet Excellence Awards. The third hadn’t been considered for the awards as it is still pending launch.

Although all three designs vary, there are some common traits which we advocate for good design. These include:

• All three homepages meet our design mantra, that when using a homepage for the very first time, it should be simple to know where to go, what to do and what to expect on your intranet. Simplicity is key!
• All of the top three show great examples of how you should use your homepage as the ‘shop window’ of your intranet and not show the entire ‘store.’
• They all have a certain amount of symmetry in the widget spacing – which encourages the user to view the whole screen rather than just the largest image or brightest colour.
• I like the good use of vibrant colours – which compliment but don’t dominate the content.

Watch our on-demand webinar – ‘Achieve the AEIOU of an awesome intranet homepage’- for tips and tricks to maximise the engagement of your intranet users from the moment they hit your homepage >>

The selected homepages are fantastic examples of the essential blend of components needed to make an essential intranet for your organisation. For an intranet to become essential, it has to have the correct blend of three core qualities. It needs the right amount of communication; collaboration and business process tools to make sure that users are continually pulled to the intranet and also pushed the correct information to ensure they stay engaged.

Interact Intranet version 5.2 now has the ability to let you know if your homepage has the essential intranet blend. To find out more join the free online webinar on November 8th>>

The post How Does Your Intranet Homepage Measure Up? appeared first on Interact software.

The winners of the 2012 Intranet Excellence Awards were announced last night during an exciting awards ceremony at Interaction 2012 intranet conference, in America Square Conference Centre.

The Interact Intranet Excellence Awards is the annual awards ceremony that celebrates the hard work of intranet managers in their efforts towards creating an essential intranet for their organisation.

There were six categories open to all Interact Intranet users this year and the coveted Best Overall Intranet award – given to the intranet that encapsulates all of the award categories, voted for by our board of judges.

Best Overall Intranet

Glasgow Housing Association, one of Europe’s largest social landlords scooped the most awards of the night, including the top accolade of ‘Best Overall Intranet’ – for demonstrating that their intranet had the strongest blend of communication, business process and collaboration tools and showing how they use Interact Intranet to solve real business problems in their organisation.

Best Intranet Design

• Winner – GHA
• Runner up – Superdrug
• Runner up – Royal College of Physicians

Glasgow Housing Association were awarded first place for their innovative use of their Cog logo to symbolise that the intranet is an essential element in the function of the organisation. Judges also commended the superb user research from their Intranet Focus Group which ensured that the information architecture was tried and tested specifically for their users.

Superdrug were awarded runner up because of their simple and clear intranet design that encapsulates the Superdrug brand. Judges also liked their use of the intranet to advertise brands and get users engaged with new products and promotions.

The second runners up were the Royal College of Physicians who utilise a simple and clear aesthetic design, which is great for new starters. The balance between pushed communication and collaboration features was also praised.

Best Intranet Manager

• Winner – Kelly Freeman, Superdrug
• Runner up – Louise Cheshire, Futures Housing
• Runner up – Intranet Management team, UK Asset Resolution

Kelly Freeman, of beauty and health retailer, Superdrug was awarded Best Intranet manager due to her dedication and enthusiasm to go ‘the extra mile’ for the Superdrug intranet. Her efforts have resulted in huge user adoption from director level down and she has championed a fantastic range of social intranet tools on the intranet including blogging and forums to improve business processes. Kelly was nominated by her colleague, Grace Sotheby.

Louise Cheshire from Futures Housing was awarded runners up position because of her constant enthusiasm in advocating the intranet and engaging all levels of staff through exciting campaigns including intranet cafe’s and celebrations.

Charlotte Dovell and Claire Johnson from UK Asset Resolution were awarded runners up also for providing a great example of how to utilise the intranet positively in a company merger. Their team of 50 content managers led by Charlotte and Claire provide excellent content manager support and knowledge sharing.

Best Intranet Launch Strategy

• Winner – G4S
• Runner up – Swagelok
• Runner up – Glasgow Housing Association
• Runner up – Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric Aids Foundation

Global security business, G4S took first place for their innovative intranet launch strategy. This involved them setting up a web editor group using the online tool, Interact Teams to share ideas and good practice and successfully launching their intranet in 125 locations around the world. They also made great use of brand awareness through their mascot ‘Hari’.

Before their intranet launch, Swagelok – who claimed runner up position, spent many months with different groups from across the company honing the perfect intranet structure for their company. The judges also appreciated the great guerilla marketing strategy which involved them replacing all the old mugs in the kitchen overnight with new mugs with the Knowlesy logo.

Best Return on Investment

• Winner – Romec
• Runner up – Waterstones
• Runner up – Manheim

Facilities management company, Romec were winners of the Best Return on Investment category. They proved that they had saved GBP2.1 million in one year, using the online forms offered in Interact Intranet’s ‘Workflow and Form’ module, which allows simple forms to be made on the intranet to streamline business processes.

Waterstones were 2011 winners and they have continued to prove to judges that their intranet is making significant savings year-on-year. They used a variety of tools offered in Interact Intranet including specific Discussion Forums which aided sales for the business.

Manheim also claimed a runners up position by showing how they used their intranet to save approximately GBP65,000 in alternative 3rd party systems and how it made a significant reduction in email usage.

Best Social Intranet – Intranet Idol

• Winner – Business Environment
• Runner up – GHA
• Runner up – Waterstones

The winner of the Best Social Intranet was Business Environment as voted for by the audience of Interaction in Social Intranet Idol. All three finalists had (around!) 5 minutes each to pitch their intranet and prove how they utilised the social tools in Interact Intranet to dramatically improve business processes in their organisation.

Joni Vass from Business Environment said in her pitch that on the intranet homepage staff are encouraged to talk to each other which is in-line with their company values of being a transparent company who are open to clients and staff alike. They utilise lots of status updates and forums and the collaboration space on the homepage lets people communicate on all levels. The interests tab enabled visibility of how photography was an interest of a particular employee. Now that person has become the in-house photographer. Joni shared impressive stats including – 100% of staff have logged into the intranet in 2012 and 86% of their social tools they use in Interact Intranet have business benefits.

Ayesha Graves from Waterstones pitched her intranet,compass. Telling the audience how she had persuaded the senior management team to understand that discussion forums can be channelled to focus on work and are useful for business productivity. Their intranet begun with 4 forums and now has over 20 forums today, with each content area manager wanting a discussion forum to share knowledge between their 4,000 knowledgeable staff.

Wendy Jordan from Glasgow Housing Association showed how there was vast use of blogging throughout their intranet, despite it only being 2 months old. She provided a specific example of a customer service blog about the day-to-day life in their department. This blog reduced the fear other GHA staff had when they were faced with the prospect of moving departments.

Louise Cheshire from Futures Housing was voted ‘Best Community Influence’ by her peers for having the most presence on the Interact Community – an exclusive online customer community dedicated to help Interact customers maximise the potential from their intranet.

Interact would like to thank everyone who took the time to enter the Intranet Excellence Awards and we look forward to celebrating your intranet successes at Interaction 2013.

The post 2012 Intranet Excellence Award Winners Announced! appeared first on Interact software.

Known as the “guru of gurus in the collaboration space”, Michael Sampson is a collaboration specialist based in New Zealand who helps organisations make collaboration work, when their employees have to work together effectively and efficiently while separated by distance and time. He has authored various books on strategies for making collaboration work and has spoken at conferences all over the world.

Michael will join a stellar line-up of collaboration speakers including Janus Boye, James Robertson, Martin White and Lee Bryant in London on October 2nd and 3rd 2012 for the UK’s largest intranet dedicated conference. He will be giving his expert advice about ‘The Dangers of Pushing Collaboration Too Far.’ Collaborating effectively is viewed as an essential capability for many organisations today, both on and off the intranet. But making collaboration work requires more than just having the latest social gizmos and mobile gadgets available.

Interaction 2012 will be a unique opportunity to see these global speakers together in the UK, to provide you with a melting pot of intranet knowledge that will ensure your intranet becomes an essential business tool. You will also have the rare chance to view the intranets of leading companies including Superdrug, G4S, Business Environment and Glasgow Housing Association, to get best practice tips and see how you can improve your intranet.

If you would like to see Michael Sampson live at Interaction we have two special discount codes. Non-profit organisations can get 20% off the ticket price by entering icharity20 and there is 15% off for everyone who books before the end of September with the code isept. Book your ticket today >>

The event is sponsored by IBF and CMS Wire and a donation from each ticket sale will be given to the events official charity, Epilepsy Action.

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One prominent UK retailer we have recently been working with was spending huge amounts of money on posting out time-critical communications about special offers and promotions to it’s many different stores. We didn’t like this at Interact HQ and it got us thinking – surely we could help! Not only was the company wasting lots of money on paper-based methods of communication, they also had no idea if those activities had even been carried out by store workers. Not good.

The idea became reality:

As we’re big fans of working smartly at Interact, our Developers put their clever heads together and came up with a tool that could not only save the retailer lots of money on postage costs but also had lots of other clever features including the ability to prioritise activities, provide visibility of which individual completed the activity (and whether the activity had been completed to the required standard) and create quick reports on over-due activities. Oh and throw in the added bonus of encouraging collaboration also and you’ve got Interact’s ‘Activity Management.’

Here are 6 great ways Interact’s Activity Management can help retailers:

1. Assign activities to individuals, groups or multiple groups of people. Head Office can quickly assign activities to specific store workers, groups of stores (maybe in a particular geographical area) or multiple groups of stores – no more costly and time consuming printing and posting!
2. Decentralise Activities. Shift workers, weekend staff and full time employees spread over many sites can lead to a loss of control and no transparency 0f whether activities have been carried out the way they should be. With Activity Management, Head Office staff can distribute activities to store managers, who can then delegate activities to individuals in their store, based on their knowledge of who they think can carry out that action.
3. Prioritise Activities. All activities set can be prioritised by Head Office staff and put in date order, so store staff know which activity they need to complete next and they can tick them off as they are completed. For added management – store managers have the ability to verify if the activity has been completed to the required standard. Clever stuff!
4. Comment on activities. Individuals can comment on specific tasks – reducing duplication of effort and encouraging collaboration amongst stores. For example, if an activity is assigned to a group of stores regarding a summer promotion and a store worker notices a mistake with that activity, they can leave a public comment on the activity which ensures the issue is flagged to Head Office and other stores are aware of this also. Similarly, if somebody knows how to complete an activity in a more efficient way, then they can share this with others.
5. Feedback on activities. Individuals can feedback directly to Head Office with any comments about the task which allows bottom up communication for continual improvement in processes. Maybe the individual thinks the deadline isn’t realistic or perhaps they are about to go on annual leave and can’t complete the activity in time.
6. Get real-time reports. Interact’s Activity Management has a real-time reporting feature which allows head office staff to create quick reports on activities that may be over-due so they can follow them up quickly, which is essential information for time critical promotions in the retail industry.

If you would like to see Activity Management in action and see how it can benefit your organisation just contact us and one of our intranet consultants will be in touch with you >>

See a video of Activity Management in action:

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